


One Last Chance

by Toryb



Series: Camp Bughead 2018 [6]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alluded smut, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But I reiterate: NO ONE DIES, Cancer, Discussions of death, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Jughead's Sick, Meet-Cute, No one is going to die but that doesn't mean it's not got some angst, Road Trips, Southern!Betty, The fic that took me an entire month to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 12:30:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15509904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toryb/pseuds/Toryb
Summary: Jughead Jones was given his diagnosis at eleven years old. Now, at eighteen, with a fear that he's living on borrowed time, he packs up a van--somehow convinces his best friends Archie and Toni to come with him--and travels across the continental United States for one last chance at seeing the world. He expects to find himself floored by the beauty of history, not some Southern belle named Betty who works at a run down little diner in the middle of Nowhere, Georgia (population maybe one thousand). Jughead catches something a lot more deadly than cancer: love.---or: Jughead isn't going to die, but I promise this fic is full of angst with a Happy Ending.





	One Last Chance

**Author's Note:**

> Right. Where to even start with this. I have literally been working on this fic since the moment Buggie Break Prompts dropped. This has something I've always wanted to write, but never fully sat down and did. Which makes sense, because this thing got ahead of me and somehow ended up a huge 14k. Which is the longest oneshot I have ever written. And let me tell you something: I love it. If you only read one thing from me I hope that it's this, because I poured a lot into this fic (mostly love, but a fear tears as well) and I think it's my favorite thing I've ever written. So if you're a fan of me I hope you give it a chance!
> 
> Also One More Thing: I know I've said it about 800 times but I really really want to reiterate that Jughead is not going to die in this fic. It's just going to be full of fucking angst but also a lot of softness and sweetness. I hope you enjoy <3
> 
> Also, shout out to my beta @bugggghead who somehow found time in her busy schedule to deal with 14k words of this nonsense. I love you.

It started with a cough--a cough that didn’t want to stop. His mother explained it away. The air was dry. His throat was dry. The water was dry. If everything was dry, then nothing could possibly be broken in her prepubescent son. Jughead trusted his mother. She was the one who told him when he was sick, helped him through a nasty stomach flu in first grade. When you’re young, mothers know more than anyone else about a cough or a stuffy nose, even more than doctors.

 

But then his throat started to swell. It was just a little a first, a small swollen gland wrapped around his neck. Every morning, Jughead would poke it until he winced, unsure why it happened. The school nurse--her name was Miss Cindy and she had powder blue hair and wore horn rimmed glasses--pointed him out one day during a scoliosis check and asked why his neck was swollen.

 

“Mom said it’s from coughing so much.”

 

He was sent home with a little note that Gladys Jones promptly shredded and threw away before even opening. She told him it was swollen because he kept poking it so much. So, the ten year old boy poked it a little less after that, only once a week to see if it got any worse. When FP came home, and was sober enough to open his groggy eyes, Jughead took his hand and made him poke it too.

 

Tears pricked up under his eyes at the touch. “Daddy, it hurts.”

 

And that’s when, at age eleven and one month, Jughead was diagnosed with medullary thyroid cancer. It didn’t have many symptoms but a persistent cough and a little lump. Cancer was a big word, a scary one that didn’t make too much sense. When people got sick, there were reasons. He didn’t feel like there was a reason for this.

 

They had to take a huge vile of blood from his arm, and even though he was supposed to be big and strong because Jellybean was waiting outside, he grabbed FP’s hand tight and cried until the nurse promised the needle was gone. At the next appointment, they said there was something in his blood that told them what the problem was. There weren’t a lot of people in small town Riverdale to fix it. There also wasn’t a lot of money to go anywhere else.

 

The night he came back with the diagnosis--and a stack of papers, filled with referrals and stamped notes, recommendations, prescriptions, things that made his head spin and another bottle of whiskey open--Jughead listened to his parents fight as JB slept right beside him in a twin bed that could barely fit him. A lot of what they were saying didn’t make sense. He felt sick to his stomach, could practically hear it tangling in knots as the fear perforated every inch of his soul.

 

Jughead pressed his ear to wall, hoping to clear out the muffled sounds. That’s when he heard his mother’s voice clear as day. “We don’t have the money for this, FP! Not when you’re drinking it all away at the Whyte Wyrm!”

 

“What do we do instead? Let him die? He’s my son, your son. If you hadn’t been in fucking denial about the whole thing maybe we could have gotten him somewhere sooner before they started talking about taking the whole damn thyroid!”

 

“Do not blame me! You blame me for everything and I’m sick of it. This isn’t what I wanted when you knocked me up at 17! You keep your shitty house and your shitty life, FP.”

 

The door slammed shut and an engine roared to life outside, slowly fading farther and farther away until it was drowned out by the lazy buzz of cicadas. He heard the creak of the same rotting wood floors that his father tread nearly every night. The pop of a can. The hiss of the carbonation. The guzzle of cheap beer. 

 

Jughead stayed up holding his breath. Every time his eyes got heavy, that fear would pounce again, warning him. If he let his eyes stay closed for too long, would he forget how to open them? Once in the boys locker room, he had overheard Reggie Mantle mention his grandpa dying of colon cancer in the middle of the night. He fell asleep and never woke up again.

 

FP snuck slowly into his son’s bedroom, cracking open the door so a sliver of light poured into the room. Head still on the wall, Jughead lifted it up with tired eyes, rubbing the tiredness from them. His father let out a sad sigh. The house shuttered under the heavy weight of his footsteps until he kneeled, face to face with the young boy whose own features were painted with fear.

 

“Why are you up so late?”

 

“I’m scared to sleep. What if I die?”

 

“You aren’t going to die.” FP kissed his forehead and pulled the outdated Spider Man covers up over his body. “Not now, and not for a very long time. Old man’s orders. But you’ve got to be strong, kid. You’ve got an awful long fight ahead of you. And so do I.”

 

Just as he was fading into a fitless dream state, Jughead heard an unfamiliar sound. It sounded a lot like beer running down the sink drain. 

 

The next morning, Gladys didn’t come home. Or the next. Or the next. She didn’t return phone calls. She didn’t email. She didn’t send smoke signals. There was no call from a coroner about a body to identify. She simply disappeared into the night and life moved on. It had to. There was a cancer diagnosis to beat and a world to hopefully one day explore. Hopefully.

 

Mortality was a strange concept to be faced with at such a tender age. He would always hear mutterings of “morbidity rates” and “chances of success”. It wasn’t too hard to figure out that success meant survival. Jughead had never been a stupid kid, paying far too much attention to all the little things around him, writing them down in notebooks he’d bought for nickles at garage sales--half used with old scribbles of two legged dogs from kindergarten kids. Writing helped him cope with an ever complex and changing world. So as the chemotherapy got underway, he started writing again.

 

Jellybean cried enough for everyone. She cried about their mom sometimes, but that was only when she thought no one was looking. Mostly, the little girl cried for her brother, gripping his hand until the nurses pulled her off of him, her little legs kicking as she screamed with as much force as all the air in her lungs could manage. Sometimes his best friend Archie came to visit too, but he didn’t scream. He mostly just talked about school and how things were going, telling Jughead he looked kind of pale, but he still had hair, so that had to be a good thing.

 

The Jones family never had a lot of money, and the doctors in Riverdale said they were the best for the job. The doctors in Riverdale were wrong. Medullary Thyroid Cancer should be treated with a trained group of professionals who understand the rarity, the severity, and the oddity of a child with it. He deserved a full medical team at a place where they knew what they were doing. Instead, he got a botched thyroid removal surgery and a few more swollen lymph nodes gone that didn’t have to be.

 

At fourteen, they said he was cancer free. The world rejoiced around him, slipping into a comfortable state of normalcy. Jellybean bought a guitar and made Archie teach her how to play it. The Riverdale High Bulldogs lost a lot of games, but won a championship his sophomore year. FP started drinking again, but managed to keep his job at Andrews Construction as a foreman. His mother never came back home.

 

But in that, Jughead felt a constant state of unease. His formative years had mostly been spent in intense fear that he might one day simply cease existing, fading into nothingness in a town that regarded him as such. Which was why, when the doctors told him on his eighteenth birthday that the cancer was back and in his bones, he simply shrugged and said, “I’ve been living on borrowed time anyway.”

 

He was given a lot of options to make things easier for him as he slipped into what they suspected might be the last year of his life. His dad, with begging, encouragement, and help from Jellybean, got him to agree to one last round of chemo. If it didn’t work--and the doctors said it probably wouldn’t--then they promised to let him fade away in peace like he wanted to begin with. So back under the knife he went. Out went the rest of his thyroid and in went needles and syringes and medicine they said, at the very least, would help him hurt a little less.

 

Jughead surprised a lot of people with his attitude. If anything, he seemed a lot more positive, upbeat, and albeit resigned. He picked up a smoking habit no one could scold him for. Archie helped him drink his first full beer, and even rubbed his back and held his hair when he threw it all back up, stomach still churning from the treatments.

 

Two months after the last of it was done, with no colleges to look at--it seemed a stupid endeavour when he knew he wasn’t going to make it there--and no concrete plans for the last few months of his life, Jughead sat down and planned a road trip for the summer, all along the continental United States. He would start in upstate New York, right in the heart of Riverdale where he was situated, and travel down the East Coast, taking in the rich history and complex culture he didn’t have much of a chance to explore. Once that was done, he’d make his way out west like all the settlers had done before him.

 

He laid out the roadmap on the first day of summer, presenting it to his best friends Toni and Archie and explained it all. “This is what I want to do with the last of it. I want to see everything I’ve never gotten a chance to see, everything most people never get a chance to see. I could sit here in a hospital and waste away into nothing or I can just...do it. Do this. Do everything. And if something happens, then at least I was living my life the way I wanted it to. I’ll say my goodbyes before we go, but I want to leave soon. Maybe next week. You don’t have to come with me. But I want you to.”

 

Toni stood up and slugged him as hard as she could right in his shoulder. “Shut your mouth, Jones. If you think you’re going on an adventure like that without me by your side, then you’re even more of an idiot than I thought.”

 

“Yeah man, of course we’re coming with you. We can use my dad’s old truck and attach the camper to it or something. Find trailer parks to land and camp there for however long. I bet it’s not too expensive.”

 

“Thank you guys.” He tried to hide the crack in his voice as they started packing up

 

It didn't take more than three days for everything to get done. Fred and FP pooled some money together, enough to get them at least to New Orleans, and there was some leftover money they had saved up from various summer jobs. The day they left, Jellybean pulled him in for a tight hug and made him promise to make it back home. It was a promise that dried bitter on his tongue as they pulled out of backcountry roads and into a blacktop jungle.

 

Their first stop was a string of iconic museums across New York. His favorite, and Toni’s too, was the Museum of Modern Art, which they were all surprised did not immediately kick them out after the fifth sculpture they laughed their heads off at. Jughead suspected it probably had something to do with the shirts Toni had made them, which pointed out and exploited his ticking time bomb of a body in a way that made people a little more reluctant to be an asshole towards him. He was pretty sure he wanted to be buried in the black “Dying But Still Cool” shirt. On the back, it said “Jughead’s last hurrah Summer 2k18”. The macabre humor of it didn’t sit well with Archie, but for Jughead, laughter was the only thing that kept him from going insane.

 

In Atlantic City, they hit their first stumble. Jughead got hit with a stroller and the bone lesion in his calf nearly hospitalized him from the pain. It was then that the gravity of the situation started to weigh a little heavier on his friends.

 

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Archie asked when the lights were turned off and the three of them sat around and shared a pot of macaroni and cheese. “You’re dying, Jughead. I don’t think any amount of… whatever this is will stop it. Why don’t we go home so you can… so you can end up resting there.”

 

“One-” Jughead took a bite of the cheese and hummed happily, his leg resting on Toni’s lap with a bag of iced pees on the more painful area- “I’m sure about nothing. Ever. And I’ve never really had to be. Finality has been part of my life since I was prepubescent. I always knew how things were going to end, so I never had to finish them. As for dying in Riverdale? I’d rather cut this leg off and beat myself to death with it. I’m not going to die in the same place I’ve been dying for fucking years. If I’m going to die, and I am Archie, you can’t keep trying to tell yourself that it’s still an if, it’s not going to be in Riverdale. The doctors said the treatment was unlikely to help and then let me go off on an adventure. If that doesn’t read ‘this kids days are numbered’ I’m not sure what does. No more ifs or bargaining, okay? I just want to enjoy whatever this is.”

 

Weighted silence clung heavy in the air until he spoke up again. “If...if I don’t make it to California, will you guys do something for me?”

 

“Yeah, Jug. Anything.”

 

An ‘anything’ from Archie really did mean anything. If Jughead asked, he would probably climb up the Eiffel Tower and stick a “jughead wuz here” sign on it. “I want you to do something for me. I want you to finish this.” He pulled out his diary, filled to bursting with photos and words and scraps of newspaper clippings he’d collected over the years. “Finish this and send it out to get published. Edgar Allen Poe got famous after death, so I think it’ll probably up my chances of publishing by a good 50 percent.”

 

With tears in her eyes, Toni gently smacked his foot. “You big fucking idiot. Yeah. Of course we will.”

 

“Thanks. You guys are the best. I know this probably isn’t easy, but the fact that you came means a lot to me.”

 

That night, no one slept particularly well. He wheezed most of the night and coughed until his chest ached, but the next morning, his friends were nothing except smiles and persistent arguing. Toni and Archie had never gotten along, at least not publicly, but maybe this would change that. He knew they’d both be a little lonely without him around. God knows he’d always been lonely without them.

 

Virginia brought him a beach that was too cold and a sand castle that was misshapen with love and kicked over by an angry toddler who didn’t want to share the sand. Toni, ever the spitfire, had been held back by Archie, kicking and threatening to crack a rock over his head. He burned his skin and made freckles across his nose. It was everything--the perfect kind of disaster he had always been craving.

 

People walked on eggshells around him, acting like with one little puff of air he could end up toppling over. But like this, things were different. No one around him knew what small town Riverdale did. He was treated like just another passing tourist, one with two annoyingly protective friends. Every inch of his skin buzzed with excitement. When the coffee shop owners gave him his coffee, they didn’t ask how his throat was today, or how his medicine was making him feel. They didn’t give a fuck one way or the other. When he drank the black tar, the others complained about the texture, but Jughead thought it tasted a lot like freedom.

 

They road through Georgia to get to Florida, headed for a one day pass at beautiful Walt Disney World. It was supposed to be one of the few places they didn’t spend much time in--but the universe had a funny way of doing things. His health had been better the last few days. Even Toni commented on a spring in his step that hadn’t been there for a long time.

 

“I’m feeling alive, Toni. More than I have in years.”

 

She shook her head, drinking down the coffee with a grimace. “Only you could look death in the face with excitement.”

 

“You make me sound emo.”

 

“Not to be an ass,” Archie said, strumming his guitar from the backseat of the camper, “but you are emo.”

 

“A primal betrayal.” Just then, he spotted a row of lit up neon signs, burgers and malts drenched in a yellow and orange glow. He gripped Toni’s shoulder and pointed. “Diner! Antoinette Topaz you stop this car right now.”

 

One of his odder missions had become slowly amassing a collection of diner polaroids, to be taken by their waitress in the booth. It started with a small series of them in Pop’s and slowly morphed into an obsession they both humored him in. With a curse and a swift punch to his stomach--ignoring the pained protest he gave--they pulled and parked into the designated RV spot.

 

Jughead was the first one out, drawn in by the possibility of a milkshake that held a candle to Pop’s and a fresh pot of brewed coffee that didn’t come out of stale Folgers tin. The same one had once belonged to Fred Andrews, back when he was making a cross country road trip at eighteen and now tasted like bitter aluminum. The little dive had a few patrons in it, mostly sitting in the back booths working on crossword puzzles and casually chatting with one another. It felt a lot like home in some ways. That dreary, small town atmosphere was palpable.

 

The green and white vinyl of the booths was cracked wide open and the wallpaper was starting to peel behind photos of famous country and rock stars. Archie pointed out each one of them, giving a long history of their careers and top hit songs, eyes wide like he had just met an idol in the flesh. A clip clop of no slip waitress shoes alerted them to company.

 

“Elvis was a regular here whenever he was in Georgia.” Her voice bubbled out from behind him, the slightest twang lingering on her lips. “You know, back when he was alive. At least that’s what my mama said and she’s got a picture of him so I trust what she says.”

 

“Really? That’s insane!” Archie’s voice was full of childish excitement.

 

Toni rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Totally crazy.”

 

Jughead pulled out his old polaroid camera from his satchel, determined to fulfill their tradition, and turned to hand it to the woman. “Do you think you could-um…” Before him was not the slightly grey faced older woman he had expected to see, complete with mousy hair and a nervous smile. Instead she was perky, blonde, with a tightly pulled ponytail and the cutest dimples in her cheeks. Her uniform was white with yellow polka dots, making her look like a beam of sunshine slipping through the blinds and coming down to kiss his cheeks. “Uuhhh… could um…”

 

All coherent thought left his brain like it had somewhere else to be. Noticing his floundering, his helpful best friend Toni simply covered his mouth to hide the cackle she always gave at other people’s embarrassment. He looked to Archie for a little help, but found nothing but giggles from him, too. Jughead was left on his own, fumbling out the gate, in front of the only girl he’d ever looked at and thought “gorgeous”. Usually that word was reserved for intricate free verse poetry or a painting of Capote.

 

“Could I?” She looked down at the polaroid camera in his eyes and smiled. “Yeah ‘course I can! Do you just want it of the three of you?”

 

“Y-yeah. Yeah that.”

 

He felt like a fool with shaky hands as he gave the camera over to her. Their fingertips brushed briefly and the last bit of his brain melted into pureed mush that even a hungry zombie wouldn’t want its hands on. She snapped the picture before he felt quite ready. No doubt he was going to look like an idiot in it. The waitress--her name tag said ‘Betty’, which was, of course, fitting for the fifties aesthetic of the diner and also adorable--shook the photo twice before handing it to them.

 

“Did I do okay? I haven’t used on of these things in years.”

 

“Perfect!” Jughead replied, ignoring the slight blur of the photo. “It looks great. Really good. Thank you, Betty.”

 

When she smiled at him, he felt like the luckiest guy in the entire world. “Great! What can I get ya’ll started with today? The special this morning is blueberry pancakes, homemade whip, and the best dang maple syrup in the country made by Blossom Maple Farms.”

 

“That. I’ll have that. And an orange juice. Please?”

 

“Perfect choice! What can I get for you two?” Toni and Archie ordered their drinks and she was off again, a bounce in her step that made her ponytail swing.

 

Archie turned to Jughead with wide eyes. “Dude what the hell was that. You hate fruit in your pancakes, have a genuine aversion to anything named Blossom, and can’t drink orange juice without threatening to vomit and going off on a six day tirade about your ranking of juice flavors.”

 

“I don’t know! I panicked! She was right there and-and I just… she said it was the special and she liked it so I panicked and said I would order that!” This was not something Jughead usually did. Food was a serious business, and he was determined to try it all exactly like he wanted. Instead, he had floundered so badly that his Georgia diner experience would be subpar at best. 

 

Toni snorted, snapping a picture of the glass syrup bottle to no doubt send back to her on again off again girlfriend (he was pretty sure they were currently off again), the infamous Blossom heiress Cheryl, back in New York. “You’ve got a crush on the waitress. That’s cute. For a while there, I didn’t think it would ever happen.”

 

“Neither did I! What do I do? Can I make it stop? What if I just… get up and walk away. Never have to look at her cute, slightly freckled face again.”

 

“Oh he’s got it bad, Archie.”

 

“Horribly. Worse than I usually do.”

 

Tired of his friends mocking him, Jughead allowed himself a moment to hide, face in his hands as he tried to dash away all the thoughts over analyzing the architecture of his waitress’ very pretty face. That didn’t last long. Within the next few minutes she was back, placing their drinks in front of them and pulling out her little notepad to get the breakfast orders from the other two.

 

“So what brings you folks out here? Just stopping through or planning on staying for a bit?” she asked, trying to make light conversation.

 

“We probably won’t stay lo-”

 

Jughead jumped in. “Depends on what’s around really. Kind of a summer cross country trip. We don’t really have to be anywhere, so if something catches our eyes, we’ll stay for a little longer than we might have originally planned.”

 

“Oh, wow. That sounds like a lot of fun! I’m stuck working the entire summer. My aunt owns this place so it’s always my summer job, not that I mind. The people are fun. I get to see folks from all over, you know? Kind of like yourselves. Where are ya’ll from?”

 

“New York.” Toni and Archie allowed him the decency to answer, his eyes trained on the little way her lips curved into a smile. “Upstate.”

 

“Awful long way to see little ole me. If you’re sticking around and looking for something to do tonight, the bar across the way is having a line dancing night. Me and my friends always go and I’m off tonight, so you’ll see a friendly face around.”

 

Unable to stop himself, he nodded. “Yeah. That sounds like a lot of fun. What time is it?”

 

Her eyes lit up, wide with excitement, as she pulled out a little card from her pocket and set it on the table. “Five to nine every Sunday! No one has to stay long, but I guarantee you’ll have a blast. Sorry, I don’t think I caught your name.”

 

“Jughead.” For one of the first times in his entire life, he was struck with just how stupid it sounded. In Riverdale, everyone knew it simply just was, and not many places or people outside of it had cared to know its origins.

 

“Jughead! Oh! I had better go put your order in!” she hurried away with a little wave.

 

Archie turned to him with wide eyes. “She was flirting with you. Invited you to line dancing and you actually agreed. Jughead you hate dancing. It hurts your legs and you have no rhythm.”

 

“Okay, that second part was unnecessary but thanks for the vote of confidence. You are the fucking worst. I hate you.”

 

“He said to one of two people he wanted on his death wish adventure.”

 

Jughead picked up a ketchup packet and tossed it at his best friend, glaring at him when he easily dodged the half hearted throw. He didn’t have a lot of energy these days for tossing things. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure he had a lot of energy for line dancing either, but the thought of seeing the cute waitress, Betty, outside of her uniform was a temptation he couldn’t ignore.

 

“What if we just… stayed one night. I’ve never been line dancing and we can call it a new experience,” he suggested.

 

Toni rolled her eyes. “We’ll stay as long as it takes to get you laid. I refuse to let you die a virgin, even if Archie has to fuck you himself.”

 

“Yeah,” Archie stopped dead. “Wait, what?”

 

It didn’t take long for Betty to come back, setting their food out for them and inviting them to dig in. “Let me know if ya’ll need anything, okay? I’ll be right around the corner.” Her smile lingered a little longer on Jughead before leaving.

 

“Definitely flirting. I say go for it.” Archie shrugged and took a bite of his bacon and ham sandwich. Toni watched him, disgruntled and disgusted. That was how most people watched him eat.

 

Jughead felt stupid for being so hopeful, but it wasn’t every day someone showed interest of any kind in him. He spent so long pushing people away in Riverdale that it never occurred to him what it might be like to have someone smile at him in a way that made his heart flutter and his breath hitch--especially not someone as pretty as Waitress Betty. Maybe this was another chance to explore and live the life he’d been denied before, even for just a few minutes, before reality called him forward.

 

He was eighteen years old and had not once so much as thought about kissing a girl. Now here he was, thinking about not just kissing this one girl, but imagining the way her body would feel against his as they danced in whatever kind of glow one would find in a line dancing bar (Moonlight? Lanterns? Fireflies? The south was weird).

 

After they’d finished eating--a feast Jughead forced down his throat despite his distaste for warmed up fruit simply to keep a smile on Betty’s face when she asked if he liked it--she brought their check out. She pointed to a few numbers penned in pink ink at the bottom of the receipt, the color was almost as bright as her flushed cheeks.

 

“Just… just in case you get lost coming out tonight. Or need a tour guide around our little town.”

 

Toni’s swift karate chop to his ribs jerked him from the surprised stupor he was in. He smiled up at her, trying--and failing--to ignore the nervous butterflies in the pit of his stomach. “Yeah. Yeah I definitely will. I’ll call or text you?”

 

“Either sounds perfect. Oh, and here’s this.” She set down a mason jar of foggy liquid, a few ice cubes melting in the humid, summer heat. “You can’t come to Georgia without tasting our sweet tea. You’ll have to tell me if you like it tonight.”

 

“I will. Promise.”

 

When they got back into the camper, Jughead nearly downed the entire glass in a single gulp. The sweetness melted on his tongue and helped cool the heat as the sun gently crept higher and higher into the sky. This was a different kind of summer feel than New York, one his exhausted and fading body was having a hard time dealing with. Toni forced him into bed until night rolled around, when the line dancing party would begin and the moon offered mercy from the suffocating heat. It was still warm and sticky out, but he felt in no danger of passing out from heat stroke now.

 

Archie, bless his entire being, helped pick out an outfit he deemed appropriate for a “first date with a cute southern belle”. It was breezy but something Jughead felt confident in despite his slowly withering frame. In the last few months, he’d gotten skinnier and skinnier, his appetite waning as the food began to sit heavier in his stomach. But tonight he felt good. Excited. Maybe even a little hopeful.

 

The party was in full swing when they arrived, half past the hour it said on the invitation. Jughead used his height advantage to scan the small club for any sign of the cute waitress who had invited him. In the corner, near a barrel of pink punch, wearing a white dress and a brown leather pair of cowboy boots, he saw her. Catching his eyes, Betty beamed and waved her hands for him. She whispered something to her friend and made her way to the crowd to stand before him.

 

“You came! I was hoping you might. Worried you wouldn’t.” She blushed gently before offering him a glass of the punch. “Want some? Non-alcoholic since we’ve got these,” Betty gestured to the black X all underage attendees had marked on their skin before entering. 

 

Jughead took the drink from her with a smile, turning around to see that his friends had up and left him, run to the far corner of the room where their encouragement was thumbs up and mouthing words he didn’t understand. He turned back to her with a nervous smile.

 

“I’m glad I came. But I’ve never been line dancing before, so you’ll have to show me.” Never danced period was a better correction. School dances were nothing but a formality for people who actually liked being stuffed in a crowded room with peers they were never going to see again. He was not that kind of person.

 

Her eyes sparkled up at him in ways he had never seen before, but might go as far as to describe them like plucked stars from a midnight sky. “I don’t mind.”

 

After only a few minutes of dancing, Jughead came to the conclusion that he had stumbled into the arms of a saint. With every misstep that landed him exactly onto her toes--and there were plenty--he was met with the subtlest wince and a stunning smile as she assured him that she was fine. There was more than one instance he thought about quitting. Quitting, running, and hiding in the back of the trailer until the sun came up and he could forget about his failure at wooing the sweet Georgia peach from the diner. But then she looked at him and he found himself laughing. There was a levity in his heart tonight he hadn’t felt since before the first diagnosis.

 

Jughead didn’t often make plans. For his final assignment in his English class, what was supposed to be a three month long research report turned into a three hour handwritten mess. No one wanted to fail the cancer kid though, and he was allowed to walk with the rest of his class. (Would he still be alive when the diploma came?) This summer vacation was a fluke in many ways. There had been a plan, and a dang good one, but already there was a wrench in the form of a pretty, young girl who tried her best to get him to dance. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to stay a few more days and enjoy flirtations he had never experienced before. And yes--after much deliberation--he had decided that Betty was decidedly flirting. He bit his tongue to keep from asking why.

 

The song started to slow and he felt her arms wrap a little tighter around his shoulder, pulling him in as the folks around them drifted closer together. From the corner of his vision, he could see Archie and Toni whispering from the side lines. Green flashed briefly between their fingers tips. Whenever money was exchanged, it meant nothing good was coming. Before he could let that disturbing thought settle too far into his mind, he felt Betty rest her forehead against the dip of his collarbone.

 

“Can I be honest with you?”

 

He smiled down at her. “No. I’d prefer you told me sweet and tender lies.”

 

Betty giggled and shook her head. “You’re a real silly guy, Jughead.”

 

“Of course I am. My name’s Jughead. If I wasn’t silly then people would never take me seriously. But what was the honesty? Trust me, my fragile heart can take it. I’m sure I’ve heard worse.”

 

“Well, it’s nothing bad!” The little frown on her lips made him laugh. “I just wanted to say that I think you’re real handsome.”

 

“Oh.” He felt the blush on his cheeks burning his skin. “I think… I think you’re really pretty.”

 

The gentle twang of a country ballad filled his ears--a sound he normally would have found grating but tonight sounded a lot like an angelic symphony. She stepped onto his feet for leverage and planted a gentle kiss right on his lips. Jughead had been kissed once before in his entire life, by Cheryl Blossom on a dare that both of them regretted participating in. She had threatened to bleach her own tongue and cut his out if he ever spoke about it to anyone, not that he could ever stomach explaining that tale to anyone who wasn’t there.

 

But Betty was no Cheryl Blossom, she was just Betty, and her lips were soft like cotton and tasted like strawberry lip gloss and sweet tea. It didn’t last long but he swore he saw the fireworks from all those trashy romantic comedies that Toni and him had stayed up watching during his first surgery recovery. However, it wasn’t the intense explosion of wonder he had anticipated, but instead a slow avalanche of joy until his heart swelled and his head spun.

 

He pulled back with a wince as the spinning started to travel from his head to a dull ache in his body. It screamed out in protest. This was too much exercise for one day when he was already falling apart at the seams. Jughead felt his throat threaten to close up, turning to cough away from her. One. Two. Three. Like sandpaper on his lungs until he could finally breathe again.

 

No one else in the room seemed to notice his pain, but Betty was right by his side, her hand gently on his shoulder. “Are you alright?”

 

Panic flashed in his mind. This was not the time nor the place to admit to someone he had barely met that he was dying, slow and steady, but dying all the same. Despite the shake in his lithe frame, he offered her a smile.

 

“Fine. Just got something in my throat.”

 

He watched her expression shift into something unreadable, unbelieving before settling back into her signature smile. Betty offered him her hand. “My Jeep is parked out front. If your friends don’t mind, maybe I could steal you away for an hour or two?”

 

“I don’t think they’ll mind.” Jughead was sure if he turned to look, they would be waving him off with frantic excitement, like a couple with a child they were watching ride his bike down the street to the stop sign for the very first time. It would have been patronizing if they weren’t so stupidly genuine. “Where would we be going?”

 

“Come on, Juggie. Don’t you like surprises?” She winked and pulled him forward, through the crowd, and out the front doors.

 

The hard top Jeep was newer than he thought it would be, painted a cherry red that he was sure would make Cheryl envious if she ever got a glimpse of it. He hopped into the passenger seat and watched her carefully pull out of the parking lot and merge into traffic. They drove farther and farther away from the small town civilization, until the once busy party lights glittered in the distance like far away stars.

 

After a half hour of comfortable small talk, she turned onto a dirt road, towards a large thicket of trees. Over the roar of the engine, Jughead could hear a quietly babbling brooke. The entire scene reminded him of Sweetwater and all the summer nights he had spent sitting on the rocky shore, watching his friends play as the reminder from his doctor played over and over in his mind--don’t get your stitches wet. That cannonball straight into Archie had been worth the second hospital trip.

 

“Is this where you pull out a pink shotgun and murder me?”

 

Betty rolled her eyes and smacked his shoulder lightly. “If I was going to murder you, I wouldn’t have let your friends see me take you away. First rule of a successful murder: no witnesses.”

 

“Someone watches true crime Netflix dramas.”

 

“Is there anything better?”

 

They exchanged a look, two kindred spirits who just so happened to stumble into each other on an insane trajectory to nowhere. Even if it was just for a fleeting moment, Jughead hoped he could bring her happiness, joy, and maybe, if he was lucky, a tender memory to think on as his casket was being lowered into the damp earth. Maybe she’d never know where he was buried, but each time she pulled open something familiar, she would think on the boy she had taken to the riverbank, where she changed his entire life.

 

“No, not even a chance.”

 

A gentle hum of summertime cicadas and quiet twangs from whoever was singing on the country station playing through her radio filled the air as Betty pulled out an old gingham picnic blanket and set it on the shore. She kicked off her boots and let her bare feet sink into the ground, pink painted toes wiggling in the fine grains. He raised his eyebrows curiously.

 

“I want to keep dancing. But I’m real tired of wearing these shoes. Come on. A little dirt never hurt nobody.”

 

Her teasing was all it took to propel him forward. The worn down chucks he always had on were tossed to the side as he stepped onto the blanket with it. It wasn’t much more than a small swatch of fabric and they were pressed close together as she took his hands in hers again. This wasn’t like the two step, nonstop, spinning and clapping he had experienced in the club--it was gentle, intimate, like a school boy holding his middle school crush.

 

Maybe that’s what she was to him. Nearly all of Jughead’s life he had never allowed himself to feel this sort of attachment for most people. There was Archie, his best male friend, Toni, his best female friend, Jellybean, his little sister, and FP, his father. Four confidants in a world that was all but determined to watch him cry himself into sickness every night. It was easy to feel lonely a lot. But with Betty, he didn’t get that feeling of pity or dread that came with the side eyed glances of his family. She didn’t know. To her, he was just some skinny boy from upstate New York who went line dancing. It was a feeling he had never experienced before.

 

Together they spun in tight circles on a cotton dance floor. Betty rested her head against his chest, listening to the steady thud of his heart. He wondered how fast it would be with her so close to him.

 

“I don’t like country music.”

 

Betty looked up at him with an amused smile. “Oh? What kind of music do you like then?”

 

“Jazz. Smooth Jazz. Also anything from the 80’s, but especially metal. But you can’t go wrong with any sort of Alternative either. Maybe some Indie Rock.”

 

“Oh so you’re one of those anything but country and rap kind of guys?”

 

Jughead laughed. “Hit the nail right on the head. But let me guess, you’ve been line dancing since you were four years old? You were raised on the farm? You do beauty pageants with your older sister?”

 

“I’ll have you know, I don’t appreciate those stereotypes.” She looked up at him with a smile. “And I didn’t start line dancing until I was six years old, we have never lived on a farm, and my older sister does the pageants, not me. Though when I was four and my mama managed to wiggle me into a dress, I did end up as Miss Junior Georgia Peach. But, I prefer to spend my time being Nancy Drew.”

 

“Can I call you that now? Miss Junior Georgia Peach?”

 

“Only if you’ve got a death wish.”

 

He shouldn’t have laughed, but he did, shaking his head as the wind kicked up a warm breeze. Betty looked up at him curiously for a moment before deciding it best to simply laugh along with him as the air made her little dress twirl. Tonight was full of firsts. Full of bad decisions some might even call it. Certainly what Archie was going to call it later. But Jughead didn’t care. He leaned down and kissed that pretty southern belle right on the lips for the second time that night.

 

The little noise she made sent a shiver down his spine. It was a cross between a whimper and a sigh and it electrified parts of his body he had never really thought were awake. The subtle sway of their movements subsided as they lost themselves in each other, pulled away from the music and focused on nothing more than the curves of her hips and the gentle sweep of her tongue coaxing his lips open.

 

How they found themselves in the back seat of her Jeep was a mystery to him, even as she lifted up the hem of her dress and tossed it over into the front seat, her hips rocking down against his in a way that sent a buzz right down to his groin. He groaned against her lips, their kisses never breaking apart for very long as they rocked together. The first attempt to unclasp her bra ended in failure. The second was only slightly more successful, ending with his finger pricked on the metal clasp and Betty giggling like a school girl above him. Golden hair flitted around her delicate features like a halo of sunshine and he found himself smiling despite his embarrassment.

 

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” he admitted, pulling her panting body closer into another messy kiss.

 

“Me neither. And I… I don’t want to do everything. But just kissing you is like touching clouds. Surreal and sweet and soft.”

 

“That’s way more eloquent than I was going to put it. Which was pretty much just ‘wow’ said until my tongue went dry.”

 

Betty laughed again and reached around to the back of her lace bra. It tumbled forward and landed on his chest. “I said I didn’t want to go all the way, but I want you to keep touching me, Juggie.”

 

On a seemingly endless night of firsts, he was not one to deny himself the only chance he had at touching a woman like this. Later, when her pretty little mouth was wrapped around his cock and he was coming far too fast for someone his age, he would say a little prayer thanking the universe for this moment of bliss. Her tongue danced across the sensitive skin over and over again until he cried out her name and gripped her hair hard.

 

Driving back to where the motor home was camped was not half as awkward as he had expected it to be. If anything, the crumpled wrinkles on both their clothes helped lubricate the situation. It wasn’t so scary to talk to her when they had already done a handful of other, much more intimate things. She walked him all the way to the front steps.

 

“Thanks for being such a gentleman, Betty.” He smiled down at her and she smiled right back.

 

“Mama didn’t raise me to leave my date unattended. Well… mama didn’t raise me a lot of ways but I picked this one to follow.”

 

Everything in his head screamed at him to turn away and make sure they left Georgia before sunrise. He was playing a game of death and losing rapidly; he shouldn’t pull anymore players with him into the crossfire, not when he knew they would get hurt. Jughead was not normally the type to follow his heart; after all, that organ was known to be the biggest liar of them all. And yet, he leaned down to kiss her one more time.

 

“Do you think I’ll get to see you again?” he asked, hopeful.

 

Betty smiled. “Yeah. I don’t work tomorrow. I don’t know what kind of plans you’ve got with your friends, but I sure would like to see you.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah I’d like to see you, too. Um, here.” Pulling out his phone, Jughead--with hands far too shaky for his liking--handed it to her with an awaiting contacts screen. “Archie ruined the receipt with hot sauce earlier so I don’t have you number anymore. But maybe put it in here and I’ll text you when I wake up tomorrow?”

 

“Sounds perfect. I’ll see you then.”

 

With one last kiss and one last smile, Jughead stumbled back into where his friends were waiting. He had not expected to be greeted with Toni and Archie, both completely shirtless and making out on the single pull out bed. It was his laughter that finally made them jump apart.

 

Toni glared and quickly buttoned up her flannel. “Shut the fuck up, Jones. You didn’t see shit.”

 

“No I totally didn’t see the two of you nearly fucking on that mattress. Must have been a trick of the eyes. I’ll leave and come back in and find you guys sitting across from each other glaring.”

 

As he left, he overheard Archie whisper, “We are never fucking living this down.”

 

The sight, while slightly traumatizing, at least offered Jughead a comfort. When he was gone, his friends wouldn’t be as lonely as he always worried. They’d have each other--in whatever capacity they chose--to lean on. He sat outside, fumbling with a cigarette he’d found in his back pocket, flicking his lighter on and off until he felt a little less nervous. Death had never scared him. The prospect of the great beyond was there and it either existed or it didn’t--either way the pain he felt just from standing would be gone and he would finally feel at peace. What scared him was the aftermath. 

 

A recovering father, a young sister, and an absent mother made for a toxic family situation. Without him holding them together, Jughead worried they would spiral down, down, down, until they hit the end, crashing and burning. And then there was Archie who made too many bad decisions and never thought he was in the wrong. He had a pure heart, but it was one easily lead astray by pretty words and false promises. Toni acted tough, strong, always ready to fight someone at a moment’s notice, whether it be for her own dignity or for someone else’s. She had once nearly crackled Reggie Mantle’s skull after he’d pushed Jughead on the playground at Pickens Park. But she was softer than she let on too, with a lot of pain bubbling under the surface no one really understood.

 

The cigarette burnt to the end, tingling the pads of his fingers with fire. He didn’t pull back until he felt it--reminding him that he was still alive, at least for now. Jughead tossed the butt into the dirt and stomped it out. He would allow himself to live in a fantasy world for just a few more days.

 

Inside, Toni and Archie were feigning sleep, as far away as they could possibly be from each other. He laughed, shaking his head before climbing up into the top bunk. He typed a quick message to Betty before falling fast asleep. It was a simple thank you and a promise of plans for tomorrow. She replied with three hearts.

 

The week long act he promised himself lasted much longer than that. On the date they were supposed to be in Florida, Jughead found himself wrapped up at a drive-in movie theatre with Betty, whispering snappy critiques that sent her giggling until he had to kiss her to quiet her down. When the calendar said Texas, he was chasing her through her backyard during a Fourth of July BBQ he hadn’t planned on attending, water balloons in each of his hands, both of their outfits drenched. The day she had asked him to go, it had been his every intention to say ‘no’. Frolicking around in a lie was one thing, but meeting her parents, her family, that was another. It wasn’t fair. It was stupid. They could all get hurt.

 

He said ‘yes’ anyway, ignoring the looks Toni and Archie gave him. They were invited too, but after some lazy excuse, it was obvious neither of them had any intention of going--which was fine, Jughead didn’t want them around to nag him either, not when he already knew he was playing with fire.

 

The Cooper house was exactly like he had imagined it to be. Their white picket fence and farmhouse style paneling jumped right out of an HGTV southern special. The air was thick was barbeque smoke, hot dogs, ribs, maybe even burgers, and he was sure he must have stumbled into heaven. Before even stepping foot into the backyard, he was offered a sweet tea in an American Flag cup, his name scrawled on the side in now familiar Betty Cooper script. Jughead smiled down at her and greeted her with a gentle kiss.

 

“I’m real glad you came, Juggie,” she whispered against his lips, pulling him down for one more moment together.

 

Everything about today felt like a moment out of his thirteen year old fantasies, when the prospect of always feeling alone and never having moments like the rest of his friends cut the deepest. There were children running around, screaming in delight as a man named Tex--Betty’s sister, Polly’s husband--doused them in water from the hose. Growing up, there wasn’t much room at Sunnyside Trailer Park for cookouts. He had been invited to a few at the Andrews’ place growing up, but when his lungs started to go bad and getting sick became easier and easier, he was practically put on house arrest, under the impression that the smoke could make him worse. Today, the smoke didn’t get to bother him.

 

A blonde man approached them, looking near identical to Betty except for the scruffy facial hair he’d grown. He extended a hand out and said, “Chic Cooper. I’m Betty’s older brother. You must be Jughead, right?”

 

“Yeah that’s me.” It seemed baffling that someone knew his name, cared enough to know his name, outside of the close knit circle he had so artfully crafted for himself. Jughead hadn’t expected that letting Betty in a little further than most would mean a brand new group of people to impress. And lie to. He put on a smile. “Nice to meet you.”

 

Betty’s eyes sparkled with something he couldn’t quite place. When her brother nodded his head, she seemed delighted. The entire thing startled him, but whatever unspoken conversation they had about him seemed to be a positive one, and Jughead vowed not to dwell on it too much. She drug him around, introducing him to all the other members of her family. Her mother, Alice, was nice, if not a bit chatty and questioning. Her father, Hal, was the opposite--quiet as he drank down a bottle of Corona and reached for another.

 

“So Jug-Head.” The way she said his name was patronizing, but given the demeanor in which she carried herself, he suspected she did that with everyone. “What are you doing out in Georgia? Do you have any plans for college out here?”

 

“Mom!” Betty protested quietly. “Please don’t.”

 

“I don’t really have any plans. I take things one day at a time.” It was the easiest answer to a complex question. If he explained too much, he would have to admit to Betty the secret he’d been keeping, and the very thought made his stomach churn summersaults. 

 

Before Alice could criticize him further, Hal shrugged. “Not a bad attitude to have. It could certainly balance you out, Betty. She’s always so high strung.”

 

“Dad! Can you please not do this in front of my boyfriend?”

 

Jughead’s heart skipped a beat. Boyfriend. He was her boyfriend. The excitement he felt was replaced by dread. He had dug himself into the very thick of it, quicksand that was pulling him deeper down until he drowned in his own lies.

 

“Sorry! Sorry!” Hal laughed.

 

A set of twins ran over, jumping on him the moment he was free from parental wooing. Betty tried to warn him, but it was too late, as his ears were filled with questions he didn’t have time to answer before the next one came rushing in. They spun him around and immediately begged for him to join them in a game of water balloons.

 

It reminded him of the same childlike excitement Jellybean always had growing up, at least until the cancer diagnosis had hit him. After that, she didn’t have the luxury of being a child anymore. That guilt had festered in the pit of his stomach for too many years. So when they asked him to play, Jughead found it impossible to say ‘no’.

 

“Only if Betty does, too.”

 

She looked at him in her little stars and stripes get up and smiled. “Oh you better get ready to lose, Juggie.”

 

“Bring it on, Betts.”

 

Nearly an hour later, they stumbled into Betty’s bedroom in search of towels. He stood in the midst of the pastel room--currently absolutely soaked to the core thanks to a water balloon fight that ended with the twins turning against him and joining their aunt’s team--unable to keep his eyes on any one thing for long. There were posters of teen bands popping out against the cheery, pink wallpaper. Signs of encouragement, including one with a kitten telling him to hold on tightly to the present, littered whatever space was left. He paused on a few photobooth pictures tacked to a thumboard above her desk.

 

There were three smiling faces. He recognized two of them from line dancing: a brunette girl with a brilliant smile and a boy with perfectly quaffed hair. It reminded him in some ways of the days spent at the Centerville mall with Toni and Archie, back when their feud wasn’t just for show and squeezing them into a photobooth was his way of punishing them for acting out in public. He still had those pictures locked away in a box under his bed marked: “to be opened in the days after my death by the few people I let love me.”

 

“That’s Kevin and Veronica.” She draped a clean white towel around his shoulders and grinned. “My best friends. You haven’t met them yet really. They were there that first night, but Ronnie left for her family’s annual trip to Milan the next day and well… Kevin never can keep himself out of trouble for long.”

 

Jughead laughed. “Trust me, I get the feeling. There have been a few things I’ve had to save Archie from, mostly himself.”

 

“Sounds real familiar. You’d think the Sheriff’s son would be a little wiser about the boys he fools around with.”

 

Things shifted to comfortable silence as he further studied the room around them. Betty must have caught his shifting gaze because she spoke again. “It’s a pink prison, ain’t it? I never liked it in here. Or maybe I did as a little kid. But I got older and I grew out of it and Mama never let me change it.”

 

“I think…” Jughead took a deep breath, remembering his own father’s determination to keep his son as youthful as he could. Grappling with the mortality of your own child would be difficult for any parent, let alone one with a known drinking problem and a few thousand other issues to cope with; so he always tried to thank his dad for the little things--even if the little things were books he hadn’t read since he was in middle school. “All our parents try to keep us young. I mean they watched us grow up and there’s never enough time with each other. Not just with our parents, but with any of us on earth. We don’t ever have enough time.”

 

The minute hand on her powder blue clock ticked softly from its perch on her bedside table, crowded with books he couldn’t quite identify from spine alone.

 

“Tell me, Juggie… do you believe in God?”

 

He noted the crucifix on her wall and laughed. “I feel as if that’s a loaded question.”

 

“Maybe, but I would never judge you. I understand why people won’t always follow God’s ways the same way I do. I don’t blame anyone, especially when the Bible is so confusing to read sometimes, and I used to help out at Sunday school.”

 

“Why’d you stop?”

 

She paused. “I think I started to stray a little from the light, too.”

 

“Don’t we all? It’s part of being human I think. Part of that impractically imperfect sort of aesthetic we have going on. If life isn’t messy is it even worth living? There’s so little time.”

 

“For everyone. Not enough hours, not enough days, not enough minutes. It scares me senseless sometimes to think I’ve spent all my days in a one horse country town. But then-” she smiled a little- “you showed up.”

 

“I feel the same way, Betty Cooper.” And then he kissed her as hard as he could, trying to deafen the screaming protests in his head.

 

How easily the day went should have been his first hint that there was trouble brewing beneath the surface of his summer days. Contentment was not something Jughead usually felt; the universe was far too fond of watching him suffer to let life breeze by so sweetly. After slipping away from the crowded venu, he found himself walking along a deserted dirt road, hand in hand with the woman who had just been labeled his girlfriend. The thought made him giddy in ways he couldn’t fully explain.

 

In all his days, Jughead would never have called himself a “going steady” kind of person. The closet he got to romance was the occasional uncomfortable brushing of a stranger’s hand in crowded public transit. But this, whatever they had, was special to him: the one and only chance he had at something like this. Something gnawed in the pit of his stomach still. He was playing a game with her. A game he would be forced to exit early and one she would never fully understand.

 

They walked in silence. It felt uneasy and her hand tightened around his. She cleared her throat. “I hope… I hope I didn’t say something wrong today. By telling my family you were my boyfriend. I didn’t mean it… Oh, I did mean it like that. I like you a lot, Juggie. And I should have asked, but I got real excited and jumped the gun.”

 

“No! No, Betty.” He squeezed her hand gently in reassurance. “I’ve just never been in any sort of relationship before, you know? So I don’t know what I’m doing. Sometimes I just get startled easily because, at its very core, a relationship messes with the loner weirdo vibes I always strive for. But this is worth it.”

 

She laughed despite herself, reaching up to wipe the tears from her eyes. “You think this is worth it?”

 

“I know all of you is worth it.”

 

Unable to stop herself, Betty threw her arms around him, kissing him so hard it sent him tumbling backwards. Dust kicked up around them. To any onlookers passing by, Jughead thought they might just see a cloud of dust appear on an untrekked path; but to him, it was a moment in time he wished he could put into a capsule and never lose track of. If he could be buried with a polaroid of Betty Cooper, he would.

 

She drove him home like she always did. The lack of vehicle was highly impractical for just how long he was spending in Georgia, but renting a car was impossible--unless they used Toni’s fake ID she got a few years back to vote, but that seemed tasteless and unnecessary. Never in a million years had he expected to stay this long in one place when his dying wish had been to travel as far as their run down hauler could take them. Then again, there were a lot of things Betty gave him that he had not pictured.

 

They shared one goodnight kiss under the stars and a promise that she would text him when she made it home safe. He stumbled into the trailer delirious with happiness only to find Archie waiting up for him, plucking strings at his guitar with an expression on his face that one might dare to call fatherly. Serious was not typical from him. Serious was reserved for the moment when the last slice of pepperoni and black olive had been taken from the box in the middle of the night, or if the juice carton was empty, or the songs he wrote didn’t come out quite right. Serious was not a look Jughead felt boring into his soul very often.

 

“Jug… we need to talk.”

 

Archie set the guitar aside and the last of Jughead’s happiness drained right out the bottom of his feet as he gave a humorless laugh. “Is this the part where you tell me you’re pregnant and I’m the father?”

 

Mercifully, his friend cracked a smile. “I don’t think that’s possible, Jug.”

 

“You almost didn’t pass tenth grade biology, how would you know that?”

 

“Fine. Fair. I may not know a lot about human anatomy and how mitosis works, but there are two things I know. One, mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. Two, you and Betty are getting serious and you haven’t told her about your diagnosis yet.”

 

He hissed and fell down into plastic folding chair. “Both… both of those things are true.”

 

“I told you, I’ve got a brain in here. You met her parents today. I’m not sure how many parents I’ve met, but it hasn’t been many. A Fourth of July family thing, or any sort of holiday, screams ‘marry me’ serious.”

 

“God, Arch, please don’t say that. I already feel guilty enough.” Jughead felt his stomach do flips and tricks, tightening into a painful pit that threatened to burst. Maybe that was for the best. He could fade into the night without having to break Betty’s heart--and probably his own in the process.

 

“That guilt is telling you something, man. Just like how I got guilty when I accidentally hit Mr. and Mrs. Grundy’s mailbox with my bike when we were twelve. Do you remember what you told me after that?”

 

“Jesus Archie, wear a helmet you absolute buffoon?”

 

It was years of practice that allowed Jughead to so artfully dodge the pillow aimed directly at his face. “No, ass, it was ‘it’s okay you messed up, but you have to own up to it’. And that’s what’s happening with you. You’re lying by omission--don’t laugh, Toni taught me that word earlier, stop laughing harder--but it’s not fair to you or her that it’s happening. You want your first relationship to be created on a foundation of lies?”

 

“My only relationship. And I’ve fucked it up beyond belief. God, I thought that kind of idiocy was reserved for you.”

 

“You’re dying, so I’m not going to punch you in the arm for that, but know that I would.” He picked up his guitar and started strumming again. “Just promise me that you’ll think on what I said. Betty deserves the truth and so do you--before you ending up doing something stupid like falling in love with each other.”

 

“Way too late for that one,” Jughead muttered under his breath, “but I appreciate the pep talk.”

 

From above them, Toni bolted up, tossing down a flurry of pillows in her anger. “Did neither of your parents teach you manners? It’s nearly ten o’clock at night.”

 

At least the pillow fight that ensued distracted him from the racing thoughts that had plagued his mind all day. There was no escape. Archie was right; he needed to tell Betty the entire truth.

 

Building up the courage to do so was a lot more difficult than Jughead had thought it was going to be. Twice so far they’d been out on a date, and twice so far he had chickened out, brushing off her concerned questions with a little laugh and a wave of his hand. The days started to tick by quicker until they were weeks. Every night he could feel Archie’s gaze on him--not judgement, just disappointment. Not that he blamed his best friend, most days Jughead felt pretty disappointed in himself, too.

 

Late on Wednesday night, the flood gates finally broke open as they sat under a starry blue sky in the backyard of her parents’ country home. It reminded him a lot of the night they had first met and a wave of sadness, so strong he nearly felt claustrophobic, washed over him. Jughead reached out and took her hand. Perhaps this wasn’t the best place to admit the truth, when he knew for a fact her father had a hunting rifle locked up in a closet somewhere. He was not as fast as a deer. Nor as cute.

 

“Betty, I need to tell you something.”

 

Her eyes went wide, her hand recoiling back from his touch. The fear was painted obviously in her expression. “What?” He caught the way her voice wavered and her fingers started to curl.

 

“I haven’t… I haven’t been completely honest with you and that’s not fair. This is getting kind of serious and you… you and this mean more to me than I can say, but I won’t let you be blindsided by anything.”

 

They spoke at the same time. 

 

“You have a girlfriend back in New York.”  “I only have a few months to live.”

 

“What?” Jughead asked. “That was the worst case scenario in your head? That I was a cheating dickhead?”

 

“You’d be surprised!” She frowned and moved a bit closer. “What did you say, Juggie? What was it? You’ve got me all kinds of worried now.”

 

The lump in his throat tightened and he felt his heart quicken as the world started to shake. Fear of loss. Ever since his mother had left, Jughead was afraid of losing people he loved because of the cancer. If Gladys, the person who was supposed to love and care for him for the rest of his life, didn’t want anything to do with him, then who would? Certainly not Betty, the beautiful small town peach who had bigger and brighter things to do with her life than waste precious, youthful summer days on him.

 

He took a deep breath and bit the bullet. “I have cancer, Betty. I’m dying. Probably. I mean I’ve been dying since I was nine when I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The doctors removed parts, but what I had was so rare and really should have only been treated by a group of specialists. We didn’t have the money so when the oncologist in Riverdale said he could do something, I think my dad jumped on it. I was fine for awhile, but I got worse and they had to remove my thyroid again. I’ve been in and out of remission for awhile but things got worse again last year. I had one more treatment, but the doctor told me to go out and live while I still could. Before I either died or ended up so sick I was hospital bound.

 

“I should have told you earlier.” Jughead didn’t have the courage to meet her eyes as he finished. “But I didn’t. Because I’m a coward. Because you’re the only person who’s never looked at me like I was a cripple, or a mess, or the ghost of someone they used to know. You just saw me. A person. A person without cancer. A person without a clock tattooed to their forehead, counting down the days until my body just shuts off. So I clung onto that, but I was being an asshole. It’s not fair for you to get attached to someone who can’t stay attached to you. I don’t want to break your heart.”

 

There were tears in her eyes. He knew that by the way they plattered on the old wood of the picnic table. When she got to her feet, Jughead was sure she was leaving, heading off to lock the door and never allow him back into her home, her life, her heart. But then he spotted those little white keds kicking up dirt and her hands were lifting him up, bringing his face up until his blue eyes met with her misty greens.

 

“Oh, Juggie. You already have.” 

 

She kissed him fiercely. It felt like a low fire in his veins, boiling beneath the surface until he could no longer keep it in. They were tumbling forward, towards somewhere, but the world around him blurred. All except beautiful Betty Cooper, who led him forward into the unknown--just like she always did. He wasn’t afraid to follow her.

 

There were a lot of things he would remember from that night: like a picture burned into his mind for the rest of his very numbered days. He would remember the sickening pastel of her walls and the softness of her pillows as she pushed him back into them. He would remember the roundness of her breasts and the coldness of his hands that made her hiss when he touched them. He would remember the way she whispered his name like a long, lost prayer as they found themselves in each other, a tangled mess of unsure limbs.

 

He would, unfortunately, remember the way he finished far too early, chanting apologies as she taught him where to touch her, what made her feel the best. He would remember the crinkle of her nose and the gasp as her body tightened around his and all the air released from her at once. But most of all, he would remember the gentleness of her touches as they bathed in the afterglow of consummation, and the way her butterfly kisses felt like stars against his skin.

 

“I love you, Jughead Jones,” Betty whispered in the hazy light of the moon, pressing her head against his heart. “I will love you until your heart stops beating and then long after that.”

 

“I think, when I float through whatever afterlife there is, I’ll leave a part of myself on earth, and it’ll be the part that loves you back, so you don’t ever feel alone.”

 

He would also the remember the way she wept in his arms, cursing the world for being unfair. For the first time in his entire life, he thought the very same thing.

 

After that, Jughead could feel the shift between them--but it didn’t come in the way he had expected it to. The morning after, she had made him breakfast and showered him in kisses before insisting they spend the rest of the day together. She didn’t pull back like the little manifestations of his greatest fears had whispered into his heart that she would. Instead, Betty clung closer to him than ever before.

 

They spent many days on the riverbanks together. She taught him to skip rocks and catch fish with his hands. Not that he was particularly good at that. More than once he’d mishandled the fish and launched it right back into the water as Betty sat on a rock not too far away, cackling so hard she slipped right off and got her sunkissed shorts wet.

 

There were even nights now that Toni and Archie joined them, whispering secrets to each other that Jughead was content to die not knowing. Whatever had happened between them in the trailer was not any of his business. Sometimes, the four of them would spend time together out underneath the sky, tracing maps in the stars until someone fell asleep and their snores rattled the quiet wilderness.

 

“Betty,” he whispered to her one night. “Can I show you something?”

 

“Always.”

 

He was quiet, reaching into his old duffle bag and pulling out his latest leather bound journal, already bursting at the seams from all of his summer adventures. “I write in this. Every time something happens, I write it down. Lately, it has mostly been about you. About us. I told my friends I wanted them to take it to LA and pan handle until it got published, but I think I want you to have it instead. So you can read it and remember me, even if it makes you cry. Maybe you’ll read it to your kids like some really depressing version of The Notebook, but with less swans and hopefully better cinematography.”

 

“You big dummy. I wouldn’t need a silly book to remember you. I’ve got your name tattooed on my heart and it’s never going away.”

 

Betty laughed and kissed him until the world spun again and everything faded into white noise. The next morning, he noticed his journal sticking out of her backpack, tucked safely between the shirt she had stolen from him and a few of her favorite pajamas. It made him smile, knowing she liked it. Life continued ever forward, fading into a menagerie of sleepless summer nights, messy kisses, and hurried ‘I love yous’.

 

And then the sickness came. It came quietly at first, a few rattled coughs that he bit back in a desperate attempt to ignore reality. It got harder to walk again and one night he cried out as the pain overtook his joints. When he couldn’t get out of bed, Archie picked him up, and they drove silently to the hospital, sweet little small town Georgia a blur in the rearview as Toni babbled to keep him awake.

 

Jughead wasn’t sure for how long, but patches of his life after that came in bursts of sleepy consciousness. He saw the IV in his arm, filled periodically by a nurse that said something to someone about fluids. The next time he blinked, Betty was by his side. She held his hand tightly, wrapped in one of his old flannels he hadn’t remembered bringing with him, saying a prayer to any God listening. Begging for her boyfriend to be spared long enough for her to see him one last time. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to leave when he hadn’t said goodbye. But before his dry lips could push out the words, he was gone again.

 

But perhaps Betty Cooper had been a hopeful vision. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Archie and Jellybean talking about his guitar. Both their eyes were bloodshot. He wanted to tell Archie that he looked dumb crying, that he should stop before he made someone else start, but things went black again to the tune of a quietly beeping heart monitor.

 

In the following interludes, he saw a lot of things. He saw Toni introduce Betty to FP, fumbling to describe the complex relationship Jughead had gotten himself into until the blonde smiled her brightest smile and said. “I’m Jughead’s girlfriend. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jones. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”

 

While he didn’t catch what else happened in their exchange, he certainly couldn’t miss the look of surprise on his dad’s face. It was followed closely by one of pride. That wasn’t something he was used to seeing. The sleep that followed was much more peaceful than the last.

 

Jughead opened his eyes and immediately felt the bright, sterile lights of the hospital attempting to blind him. His body didn’t feel as weak as it had before, and this time keeping his eyes open felt much less like a serious round of olympic heavy lifting. He had the strength to move his head from side to side and study the mess around him. Toni and Archie were curled up in one chair, Jellybean beside them, drool smeared across her leather jacket. Neither his father nor Betty were around.

 

His next formal cognitive thought was that he had to pee. Badly. He reached down and fumbled for a moment before finally wrapping his hand around the “call nurse” button and pressing down. Three of them came running in a panic. It woke up the group sleeping beside him, each in their own state of worry until Jellybeans gaze fell on his and she gasped.

 

“Sorry to worry. Not dead. Just have to go to the bathroom.” His voice crackled and another cough overtook his tired lungs.

 

One of the nurses escorted him there, helping him sit back in bed once business was taken care of at last. They whispered to each other for a moment before issuing warning to his friends that they be gentle and not push him too hard. No one knew how much longer he would be awake.

 

“So many long faces. It’s like someone died around here.”

 

Toni reached out and nearly shook him, but the look on her face let him know she’d reevaluated potentially getting kicked out of the hospital and settled for bumping his leg. “Yeah you’re so funny, Jughead. Scare us half to death and wake up with an unfunny joke.”

 

“It’s the iconic Jones way. We cope with sardonic humor.” Jellybean smiled and crawled into bed beside him. “I seriously thought you were going to die before ever hearing me play at a concert. Or Archie.”

 

“Well we’ll all die before hearing Archie play at anything other than a dive bar, but I have hope for you.”

 

Archie tried to frown, but simply shook his head with a smile. “Good to see you’ve still got your personality.”

 

“They didn’t lobotomized me did they?”

 

“No. But Jughead we’ve got some news for you. So try and stay awake for it.” Toni took a deep breath. “You got the flu. That’s why you’re here. Apparently, because of the chemo, your body wasn’t really strong enough to fight back against it and you got sick. Really fucking sick. Which is one of the reasons Archie and I kept telling you how stupid of an idea this entire mess was, but you like being right and not listening. They had to run a few panels of blood work because we told them you had cancer and no one at Riverdale General was answering. But when they started testing you, especially because they thought maybe it was… maybe it was the cancer…”

 

When she was unable to finish her thought, tears streaming down her cheeks and a sob caught in her through, Archie stepped in. “It’s gone, Jug. The cancer’s gone. The nurses think the last treatment you had put it in remission again. They think that if you make it through the flu, you’ll be okay. For a long time.”

 

Jughead wasn’t sure what to say, or even how to breath. His entire life had been a cycle of remissions and pains--never ending abuse to his body that left him often wanting to simply fade into the great black nothingness for peace. During the last year or so, he had come to accept it, even look towards it with excitement. At least then, the torment would be over.

 

And now here he was, presented with the very real possibility that he was going to live for as long as the cancer spared him. His last ditch effort had scared it all away. Before he might have put on a smile and pretended to be hopeful for them, all while wishing he would be spared the pain of hope again, but that was not now.

 

Now, someone had taught him how to live again, to enjoy the passing clouds and look forward to the morning sunrise. He had learned that fear lingered behind everything, but without jumping forward into the unknown, there would be nothing left on the precipice but misery. So instead of smiling and pretending to thank his lucky stars, Jughead started to weep as hope finally wiggled its way into his heart.

 

He was still crying when Betty and FP opened the curtain, holding cups of overpriced coffee mixed however the others had liked. Without her dedication to her waitress training, they all would have spilled to the floor when she saw him there, smiling as best he could as the subtle waves of nausea threatened to send him running for the bathroom again. The coffee was placed in Toni’s waiting arms and then she hugged him as tightly as she could. Jughead tried to hug back, but the weakness in his joints would only allow a little tap to her shoulder to let her know “ _ it’s alright, I’m here, I’m okay. I. Am. Alive. _ ” 

 

There were as many tears for his life as he had thought there would be for his death. All the while Betty clung tightly to his side, pressing little kisses on the parts of him that ached most, like she could tell they needed the extra attention. 

 

As each day passed, his strength--and his appetite--slowly returned. Archie snuck in burgers to keep him well fueled and occasionally Betty would bring him ice cream from the diner.

 

Despite it being a rational suggestion, the news that he would have to return to Riverdale after his release, to be checked by his doctors back home, left a bitter taste in his mouth. In Riverdale, there was reality. Not like the twilight zone of Georgia, which had brought him not only a loving girlfriend, but a myriad of wild experiences he had never even hoped to have.

 

“I love you Juggie,” Betty said to him on the last day of his hospital stay. “I meant it when I said I would never, ever stop.”

 

“I know. I meant it, too. I promise we’ll still be together. As long as you’ll have me?”

 

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

 

They kissed until his body started to ache and they were forced to pull apart by FP’s loud cough, muffling his laughter. She blushed and buried her face against his chest. Jughead’s father smiled and turned back to his phone, mapping out the route they would take on their return trip home to New York. It was a silent exchange that fueled the hope now festering in the pit of his heart. Perhaps each passing day from now on would brighter than the last.

 

When they left the next morning, with a tearful goodbye as Betty settled her favorite cross necklace around his neck, he didn’t feel as sad as he thought he might. “You come back soon alright? I want that necklace back and you and I… well we’ve got a few more journals to fill, wouldn’t you think?”

 

“Yeah, Betty. I think so.”

 

The familiar small town that had been his home for so many months slowly retreated into the distance behind their little camper. It felt painfully bittersweet, but Jughead would be back soon. To reclaim the heart he had left behind. Because now, with the days not so numbered, he had all the time in the world to make his way to the west coast. And this time, he would take Betty Cooper with him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who finished this. I means the WORLD to me and I hope you enjoyed it and have an amazing day <3
> 
> Don't forget to follow me on tumblr @tory-b!


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